VLOGUE
This project was for Blaseball Cares, a volunteer-run merch store featuring fan works about the internet’s most favorite splorts sensation, Blaseball. All proceeds from every sale are donated to charity.
As a parody of VOGUE, VLOGUE is an in-world fashion magazine featuring some of Blaseball’s most prominent players and characters. I took on the cover story, which featured Nagomi Mcdaniel, a legendary character in her own right. The story was essentially a profile of her and her career, focusing primarily on her unique achievement of having played for just about every team in Blaseball. You can read the full story here, or purchase your own copy over at Blaseball Cares.
The Traveler’s Guide to Little Sodaburg
It all begins with an idea.
Role: Writer, Narrative Designer, Host
What do you get when you combine idyllic seaside towns, far, far too many fish puns, and a sinister soda company? Little Sodaburg!
As writer, I contributed to the development of the story behind The Traveler’s Guide to Little Sodaburg, which takes players on an “utterly immersive and delightful” journey through the history of the world’s best little seaside town (brought to you by Wahoo! Fizz).
Press:
The Escape Roomer: “The Traveler’s Guide to Little Sodaburg is easily one of the best games we’ve played. Period.” Full review here.
Room Escape Artist: “The Traveler’s Guide to Little Sodaburg is an expertly crafted labor of love which I hope will be the harbinger of a new wave of premium, innovative virtual puzzle games.” Full review here.
Field Guide to Memory
Role: Contributing Writer
What do we leave behind when we’re gone? How do those things tell our story? Who’s left behind to tell it?
Field Guide to Memory (an IndieCade Award-winning game), created and written by Jeeyon Shim and Shing Yin Khor, seeks to answer those questions in a unique form: the keepsake game. Participants delve into the life and times of Dr. Elizabeth Lee’s wonderful and complicated journey via the artifacts she’s left behind following her disappearance. They do so by writing a daily journal recounting their day-to-day discoveries — the game is played one real-time day at a time.
In-world, they are assistants of Dr. Lee’s, and as such, become something of a point person for Dr. Lee’s colleagues and fans. Contributing writers like myself were responsible for the creation of a few characters and their stories.
I created the story of Katarina Arda, a fan of Dr. Lee’s from childhood who sought to follow in her footsteps but fell short as a result of the inequities and marginalization that run rampant in academia. Creating a character whose only interaction with the participant was through epistolary means is its own fun challenge. I believe that I was able to create a character who delivered a satisfying (and poignant) narrative arc, played out over two simple letters.
Players received the first letter from a young Katarina, an archived bit of ephemera that Dr. Lee held on to. The next day, they received another letter from Katarina in the present day — older, wiser, and perhaps a bit more jaded. The players were tasked with responding to one of three other letters from Dr. Lee’s admirers or colleagues, and that included Katarina. Players connected to Katarina and her struggles, and wrote beautiful, reassuring messages to her in response.
Event Horizon — The Wilds
Role: Set Designer, Producer, Prop Master, Acquisitions
Touching down on a new planet, a group of intrepid explorers made up of doctors, scientists, and a documentary crew discovers a beautiful oasis that would be perfect for a new colony. If only it wasn’t surrounded by plants that mutate any DNA it comes in contact with.
The Wilds was a weekend-long blockbuster Live Action Role Play game that invited participants to explore in and around a campsite in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There, they encountered alien creatures, conducted research into mysterious medical maladies, and raced against the clock to defeat a deadly virus that threatens to literally claim each explorer and turn them into another part of the Wilds.
My work focused primarily on set design and construction with an extremely limited turnaround time. Some sets were to be deployed shortly before players arrived to the site, while others were made to be somewhat more “permanent” points of interest. The event culminated in the dramatic discovery of a bioluminescent patch of exotic plants, at the center of which was a mysterious golden artifact. This discovery happened on a night hike, highlighting the eerily-lit and color changing patch of mutated growth.
Explorers Guild
Role: Writer, Experience Designer
The Explorers Guild of San Francisco is a group of adventurers, artists, and, yes, explorers, whose travels around the world are always centered on the creation of immersive fiction. The Explorers Guild maintains many traditions that make it an exercise in world building. Each participant in every journey has a chance to add to the world’s lore.
The Guild has journeyed to many different destinations, including Yosemite, the Netherlands, Hawai‘i, and, of course, Bay Area parks and landmarks. Each journey is detailed and explained in a field guide, uniquely created for the destination. It includes factual information about the point of interest as well as a fictional story explaining its significance to the Explorers Guild.
A park in Ashland, OR can become the site of an accord between humanity and dragons, a hike through Castle Rock can become a search and rescue mission, and so much more.
My contributions to the Explorers Guild mostly revolve around world building, specifically establishing some of those stories detailed in the location-specific Field Guides. In more than a few instances, I created or helped create full-fledged, site-specific interactive immersive experiences as part of the Guild’s “Caravan Rally,” which sees Explorers on a long 24-hour road trip. Additionally, I’ve acted and performed in a variety of roles for these experiences.
Stellar Displacement (Gray Area)
Role: Experience Designer
As part of the Gray Area Creative Code Immersive Spring 2017 cohort, I created Stellar Displacement, an immersive experience designed to recreate the feeling of stargazing, all built from scratch.
Stellar Displacement is a riff on some previous, private work I’ve done that revolves around stars and our relationship to them. Set in a corner of the showcase floor, Stellar Displacement invited guests to sit or lie down on grass (turf) next to a pitched tent and stare up at the pillowy blanket of night sky above them. In turn, each guest was invited to use a special glove that would allow them to connect as many stars as they wished, creating a constellation right there on the spot. After finishing, they were invited to share the name of their constellation, as well as its story, if they had one.
The tech stack used an Xbox Kinect, a short-throw projector, and a custom-built program written in p5.js (written by myself, with assistance from Issac Kelly). The glove controller used small infrared light beacons sewn into the palm (pictured right), attached to a Lithium ion battery, secured in a pouch on the wrist. I did the soldering and sewing myself.
Sylvan Echoes at Obfuscia Hotel
It all begins with an idea.
Role: Narrative Designer, Interaction Designer, Set Designer, Host
“Experience the mysterious journey of the Keepers with all of your senses, delving into an otherworldly plane of existence. Legend has it that on certain nights a portal to the Echoes opens, and guests may learn firsthand just what the Echoes are all about.”
Originally presented as part of the Obfuscia Hotel, a party hosted at the highly-exclusive Battery Club in San Francisco, Sylvan Echoes was a walk-through experience that took guests through a mysterious portal, going from a museum of oddities to a forest that had magically appeared in the club’s ballroom.
There, they shared in storytelling, complete with one-on-one experiences, until they were finally invited to join the ranks of the Keepers before returning to the regular world.
hey, friend (zine)
In the wake of the 2016 election, anxiety about the future began to reach a fever pitch. In response, I, like many, turned to social media in search of direction — in search of comfort. In the years before the election, I had taken to posting what I called “hey, friend” letters online; short, but often emotional and (hopefully) reassuring messages that I hope brought comfort to those who would read them. And so, as a way to distract myself from the world, I compiled those letters, plus an excerpt from Adam Gnade’s The Do-It Yourself Guide to Frighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad, into a zine (pictured right). I hand wrote the original by myself, and after sharing photos of it online, I began to receive requests for a copy from friends, old and new. The subsequent copies were written by typewriter, and all copies of the zine were bound by hand. Only 12 copies were made, all of which were mailed out across the country.
Living Room at Our City Oakland
It all begins with an idea.
Role: Interaction Designer, Co-Producer
This installation was designed to look like a common family living room had sprouted in the center of Frank Ogawa Plaza, directly in front of Oakland City Hall. The intent was to offer the city of Oakland, California a common room to share, where they could meet, play games, and even participate in chores if they wanted to (complete with chore wheel).
The picture frames on the wall were arranged like family photos and showed a montage of the visitors who came to spend time with us in the living room. Friends and new family alike could find themselves featured on the wall within moments of first visiting the living room, a reminder that we are all family.
The Latitude Society
It all begins with an idea.
Role: Writer, Experience Designer, Event Lead, Stage Manager, Volunteer Liaison
A secret society, an art collective, a quasi-cult, a startup — all of these things describe a different aspect of the Latitude Society. Put simply: it was a city-spanning narrative experience that began with a surreal, in-person experience that sent you tumbling down secret slides and crawling through pitch black tunnels.
Once you completed the initiation journey, you became part of the Society proper. This meant you had access to many unique experiences and events that would continue the narrative or connect you to other Society members.
I served as a writer, focused on world building and story development. I also co-produced a live puzzle adventure for the Society’s yearly gala and handled day-to-day coordination for a large group of volunteers. Before its shut down and dissolution, I developed and designed an in-world venue.
I recounted my experience in a blog post over on Medium. You may also have read my colleagues’ and friends’ articles covering its demise over on Vice, Business Insider, or Longreads.